It started with one frame.
I had spent years building a career I thought I wanted. But somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t excited about the work I was doing.
I missed making things with my hands. I missed the simple satisfaction of starting with an idea and ending with something real.
Then I built my first bicycle frame. And something clicked.
Today, I get to help other people experience what I did: turning an idea into a bicycle frame they built with their own hands. Watch my story, or read it below.
I used to have a very different life.
I lived in Potsdam and worked as a climate scientist in Hamburg. Every other Monday morning, I left home early to catch the 6 a.m. train from Berlin.
I still remember standing in the station in winter. It was dark, it was cold, and everyone looked like they would rather be anywhere else.
I knew the feeling.
I had spent years building a career I thought I wanted.
And I wanted to quit.
Most of my days were spent in front of a computer, running simulations and analyzing data. I had hoped that working on climate science would give my work a sense of purpose. Instead, I found myself wondering whether this was really how I wanted to spend my life.
Something was missing.
When I finally left the job, I took two months off and went home to my parents in the US.
For years, I had been thinking about building my own bicycle frame. Suddenly, I had the time to actually do it.
So I did.
I had grown up making things, but somewhere between university and a career in science, I had forgotten how much I loved working with my hands.
Building that first frame brought it all back.
It wasn’t easy. There was a lot to learn, and plenty that didn’t go exactly as planned. But that was part of what made it so satisfying.
You start with a handful of steel tubes. You cut them, file them, fit them together and join them with fire.
Slowly, an idea becomes something you can hold in your hands.
When I finished my frame, I put it in my parents’ kitchen and took pictures of it. I was ridiculously proud of it.
It wasn’t perfect. And it certainly wasn’t going to change the world.
But I had made it.
That feeling stayed with me.
For years, I had been looking for work that I could feel connected to. Something that would make me want to get up in the morning and go do it again.
It turned out that building a bicycle frame gave me the answer.
I came back to Potsdam and started Big Forest Frameworks.
That was more than a decade ago. Since then, I’ve built a lot of frames. But somewhere along the way, I discovered that I enjoy helping someone build their first frame even more than building another one myself.
I’ve now helped hundreds of people turn an idea for a bicycle into a frame of their own. Most start with little or no experience, and often with a fair amount of doubt about whether they can actually do it.
Then they start.
They cut the first tube. Make the first joint. Light the torch. Make mistakes. Learn. And slowly, the thing they’ve been imagining begins to exist.
Eventually, they’re holding a frame they built themselves.
I know that feeling.
It’s the reason Big Forest Frameworks exists.
